Scientists Discovered Two Gigantic Bubbles of Gamma-Ray Energy at Milky Way’s Center !!!

November 10, 2010 by Nataly in Science

img.source http://www.latimes.com/

Startled astronomers discovered two gigantic bubbles of gamma-ray energy aligned at the center of the Milky Way. The bubbles may have erupted from a supermassive black hole.

Astrophysicist Douglas Finkbeiner, who led a team that used data from NASA’s orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to discover the bubbles hiding behind a fog of gamma rays, said that the bubbles were big, sharp-edged and that they contained a lot of energy. He also said that they were emitting about the same amount of energy as 100,000 exploding stars.

Researchers still don’t know what produced the bubbles but they said that the bulbous features might be evidence of a burst of star formation a several million years ago. Another possibility is that the bubbles might have been produced when a supermassive black hole in the heart of the galaxy, which has a mass about as four million suns, gobbled up a bunch of gas and dust. “We don’t fully understand their nature or origin,” said Doug Finkbeiner study leader of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“Whatever the energy source behind these huge bubbles may be, it is connected to many deep questions in astrophysics” Finkbeiner concluded.